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Friday, June 17, 2011

Madness Night in Canada

Even before the final seconds had ticked off the clock and extinguished the Vancouver Canucks dreams of a Stanley Cup, things had begun to unravel rather badly on the streets of one of Canada's most recognizable cities.

Vancouver, the jewel of the nation one year ago, awash in the joy and celebration of a remarkable Winter Olympiad, instead was unrecognizable to the world, a home of shattered glass, burning cars and angry louts , some drunken, some stoned, some both. A collective which defied all that was civil in their quest for their own personal bit of fame and dishonour.

We rarely dwell on the social issues on our hockey blog, we prefer to keep its entries in the sphere of the game and issues associated with it, our little island from the world.

But sometimes events dictate that the game take a second place, that's a sad commentary on the end of a fascinating Stanley Cup playoff year, the drama of two months of intense competition left aside for the moment as we digest the horrid, senseless scenes of destruction and violence on Canada's third largest metropolis, the western gateway to a nation that thankfully welcomes all and simply asks that those that have chosen Canada abide by our rules and regulations.

From the visuals of a horrific Wednesday night we can only say it's too bad it seems that those of us that have been here for a while now and have benefitted from all that Canada provides, don't follow our own advice.

Much was said on Thursday of the nature of that crowd that ran amok for more than three hours following a hockey game, initially described as a hockey riot, we offer up the thought that this was a riot that used a hockey game as a cover.

In past years, we would be found watching the post game interviews, enjoying the celebrations of the players from the ice and commiserating with the vanquished squad that saw the dream of any Canadian kid that ever put on blades dashed with that final horn.

And yet, with the obvious indication that something was going very, very wrong on the streets of a city I've enjoyed so many times over the years, I instead sat transfixed to my television, switching channels through the hours, mortified that we can be reduced to a pack of mad dogs seeking to offer nothing but anger and hatred, a collective with nothing to offer than destruction, violence and theft.

This was once again a familiar scene, reminiscent of the mobs we've seen in the past, whether in 94 on Vancouver's Robson street, rampaging at the start of the Olympics in downtown Vancouver last year, or through the streets of Toronto in 2010 laying waste as they travelled through the nations largest city. There may be new faces that join in, but there are just as many of the usual suspects, the dark underbelly of our society and a concern that needs to be addressed on a national basis.

Many things jumped into our thoughts during those hours of disgust Wednesday night, such as why so many chose to stay and watch rather than leave and allow the police to do what was so desperately needed to bring such havoc under control.

Those that turned the streets into a carnival of destruction by cheering on the slugs on the streets, are just as culpable as those that burned cars, broke windows and assaulted people seemingly at random. By being there and egging them on, they became part of the problem they as the audience provided the fuel to a fire that spread in far too many directions.

On a night full of losers and their enablers, there were heroes of the night as well, those who daily serve us in cities across this country and around the world.

First and foremost, the police that bore the brunt of a mob that raged at authority as though they were entitled to lay waste to their city by right, the "riot plan" as it was frequently referred to by the Mayor and police spokespersons, seemed to be more of an impediment for the front line responders of the Vancouver Police and those called in from the outlying areas.

The line that is frequently refered to as the thin blue line, and indeed it seemed awfully thin on Wednesday, facing off against a raging mob with no discernible ambition other than to destroy. Vancouver's residents can be proud of their cops on the streets, they tried valiantly to keep a lid on things as best they could, seemingly dreadfully short of the kind of resources required for such an out of control mob.

At points Wednesday night the Mayor and other municipal representatives claimed that things were progressing according to their plan, if so, it would appear that it's time to knuckle down and develop something else.

For what seemed like an hour, if not more, it was as though the mob was ruling the city.

We have nothing but empathy for the Fire fighters, unable to do what they bravely do at every call, respond to dangerous fires and provide rescue services as the mob blocked access, at times actively engaging the fire fighters with bottles, cans and other items of what was very much an urban war zone.

Ambulance attendants and paramedics, normally available with but a call, could only stand by frustrated as calls for assistance were stymied by a collection of miscreants who had no care of the injured or the endangered, but only of their own evil.

And even ordinary citizens, who stood at great peril to their own lives in the face of a mob, pleading for civility, a call ignored with disdain and churlishness at its most extreme.

There will be the requisite investigation into what went wrong and while the Mayor and Premier put on their stern faces on Thursday and vowed that the festival scenes that made up the Vancouver landscape over the last two months would still go on in the future..

However, after Wednesday night you have to think that in the end, public safety will dictate that the Live Zone experiments are gone for the foreseeable future, if not longer.

A sad commentary that the greater good of the community can be held hostage by a band of scum, cowards one and all.

The Vancouver Canucks lost a hockey game and a championship on Wednesday night, that happens in sports but life goes on. But on a night when a game should have been celebrated for the national passion that hockey is, it instead became but an afterthought.

More importantly beyond a game, a city lost a bit of its soul, it's bounce, it's reason for being on Wednesday.

It too will come back... eventually.

Vancouver still has much to offer to its visitors and residents alike, but the feel good spirit of community that was spawned from the Olympics is gone, left in rubble on the streets of Vancouver.

Those responsible and those that joined in on the madness of Wednesday night may yet be brought to justice, though one wonders if even in this era of social media, camera phones and YouTube videos if that is even possible, we hope so but the task we fear is going to be an onerous one for the authorities.

If the net results of the aftermath of 1994 are any guideline, few if any will ever suffer any real consequences from their actions.

The massive defiance of common sense, civility and rule of law was created by creatures I don't recognize and refuse to acknowledge as even human, I'm thankful that there are still more of us that understand that there is much to be lost to the tyranny of those that only want to spawn anarchy.

The Vancouver Police, RCMP and other forces from the Vancouver area took back the streets on our behalf on Wednesday night, as a society we need to make sure that the message gets out, that those streets remain ours and not the domain of the likes of those we saw Wednesday who may think otherwise.

Below we've collected a number of items of note from the explosion of ugliness on the streets of Vancouver, sadly, there's much more of them to archive than there are of the game we should have been talking about today.